appreciation

It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity and the great ease which it has lent to computations put our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity.

I hate that aesthetic game of the eye and the mind, played by these connoisseurs, these mandarins who "appreciate" beauty. What is beauty, anyway? There's no such thing. I never "appreciate," any more than I "like." I love it or I hate.

To know the mighty works of God; to comprehend His wisdom and majesty and power; to appreciate, in degree, the wonderful working of His laws, surely all this must be a pleasing and acceptable mode of worship to the Most High to whom ignorance can not be more grateful than knowledge.

There are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless.

One simply cannot come to a cause like the kingdom of God, with its celestial concepts, and not appreciate and identify with what Ammon said: "Behold, I say unto you, I cannot say the smallest part which I feel."

Seven gifts my mother gave me: 1. The gift of right: if mamma saw a wrong she righted it. 2. The gift of friendliness: making people happier than they were before 3. The gift of rose-colored vision: mamma liked for the flowers, not the weeds. 4. The gift of fun: mamma gave us the best gift a mother can - her time. 5. The gift of understanding: she was always trying to solve people's problems or at least listen to them. 6. The gift of thoughtfulness: she didn't wait for something special, she just did kind acts any time she saw the need. 7. The gift of respect: when you help to inch your fellow man along on that struggle to dignity, he loves you for it. Seven gifts? I could list seven hundred gifts my mother gave me. Gifts not boxed and ribboned. Not always noticed or even appreciated at the time. But a part of us. Forever.

Abandon the urge to simplify everything, to look for formulas and easy answers, and to begin to think multidimensionally, to glory in the mystery and paradoxes of life, not to be dismayed by the multitude of causes and consequences that are inherent in each experience -- to appreciate the fact that life is complex.

Find a teacher who is an integral being, a beacon who extends his light and virtue with equal ease to those who appreciate him and those who don't. Shape yourself in his mold, bathe in his nourishing radiance, and reflect it out to the rest of the world.